It's fine. Everything's fine. He's ready for this. He's not worried. He feels great! He's gonna ace the test and eat a nice, hot dinner when he gets back home. He's not panicking. Nope, not at all.
Except he totally is.
"Mom, where are my new shoes!? I can't find them!" Midoriya yells, frantically towling his half dry hair and hopping into a pair of track pants. It's six thirty in the morning, and by all accounts, he should still be asleep. But even though the exam isn't until nine, he's getting ready.
"They're in the hall closet, on the second shelf! Still in the box!" his mom calls back. She's in the kitchen, happily frying eggs.
Yelling a thanks, Midoriya finally gets his pants on and throws the wet towel into the dirty laundry. He pulls on a pair of socks (brand new with miniature All Might faces) and slips on a heavy long sleeve. His jacket is last, and he quickly looks himself over in the mirror.
He looks like a total nervous wreck. His hair's a mess, and there's sweat on his forehead, and, oh god, his hoodie strings are uneven.
Midoriya rushes to fix this, at the same time looking over his room for his backpack. It's in the corner, and he justknowshe'll forget it if he doesn't put it somewhere else, and—
"Sweetie, come eat!" his mother yells, walking down the hall. "You won't do your best on an empty stomach!"
Midoriya muttered something akin to agreement but kept hastily adjusting his outfit. Have his pants always fit that bad? They really shouldn't show off his thigh definition, but he got them three months ago! Should he change? Yeah, he probably—
"Izuku. Eat. Now!" his mother orders, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him to the kitchen.
Plopping down at the table, Midoriya looks over his breakfast. It's large, but smaller than usual, probably because he's not doing his morning workout today. Half the plate is filled up with eggs, and the other with brown rice. There's a small bowl of grapes, along with a tall glass of chocolate milk.
He picks up his fork and stares. "Thanks," he says quietly. "I'm… I'm not hungry."
His mother looks at him worriedly. "Honey, you need to eat. Even if you don't feel up to it, eat the eggs, at least. They don't reheat well."
"But—"
"No buts," his mother cuts in, "today's a big day. You need food!"
Midoriya eats slowly. There's probably a million thoughts that run through his head between each bite, but he manages to set everything down despite the fact that it tastes like nothing.
After breakfast, he slips on his shoes and looks through his backpack five times. Four pens—two black, one red, one blue. Six pencils, number two. A sharpener. Three erasers. A one subject notebook, college ruled. Highlighters—one green, one yellow. Emergency cash, which is enough yen to get him home even if he's fifty miles away. Phone, set to silent. Wallet, with his student ID and the printable U.A hopeful card. Keys.
Thatshouldbe everything. He looks again two more times before he's finally standing in the doorway. He's crying, which is normal. His mom's also crying, which is also normal. It still feels different, somehow.
"Mom, I..." Midoriya doesn't know what to say.
His mother doesn't either and settles for pulling him into a tight hug. Midoriya's worries melt in an instant. He feels light as a feather now, but he hasn't stopped crying.
"Do your best, son," his mother sobs into his chest, "I'm already so proud of you!"
Midoriya squeezes her tight, trying to blink away the tears that won't stop. "I will. I promise."
They separate after that, and Midoriya turns to walk down the hall to the elevator. He's probably late now, but that's fine. He's got this.
"Wait," his mother says suddenly, disappearing into the living room.
Midoriya sighs, a bit annoyed, but mostly eager to go. "Mom, I gotta leave, I'm already—"
His mother reappears, a heap of bright red in her hands. She thrusts it into his arms. "Here," she says, backing away, "it was your father's."
Midoriya blinks, half tempted to ask another question. "Mom," he starts, but he's quickly interrupted.
"Go!" his mother shouts, practically slamming the door in his face. "I'll tell you later! Good luck, I love you!"
The run to the train station was a bit hectic, but he got there just in time to swipe his card and take a seat. Well, he would have taken a seat if one was open. The amount of people taking the U.A entrance exam must be in the thousands, because the normally half full train car is packed to the brim.
Carefully wrapping an arm around a pole, Midoriya looks over the lump of cloth. Unfurling it, he finds that it's a scarf. It's about four feet long and a bright red-orange. It smells of gunpowder and fire smoke, which, considering his father's Quirk, isn't surprising.
He'd never met his father. At least, he doesn't remember meeting his father. It's a little weird having something to remember a man he'd never even talked to, but it's comforting somehow. Like the scarf is definitive proof that the man existed.
Wrapping the cloth around his neck and tying a loose knot, Midoriya looks around his train car. Most of the people in it are kids his age who he's seen around the neighborhood. There's even a pair of students from his homeroom. One spots him and whispers in the other's ear. Midoriya has to burrow his head into the warmth of his scarf to escape the giggles.
Everyone gets off the train at the same stop. Or at least it seems that way. Fifty middle schoolers eager to enroll in Japan's top hero school all march in one direction to the school's gate. The crowd thickens as they get closer, and Midoriya winds up with a couple elbows in his ribs and a stomped foot.
The line at the gate moves quickly, and Midoriya feeds his pass into a machine, which prints out a card.Midoriya Izuku,it reads.Quirk: Superpower. Exam: Heroics. ID#: 9999.
There are strict instructions to head right for the test room and even a couple pros hanging around keeping an eye on the mob of kids. Midoriya doesn't think anyone would be stupid enough to break into U.A at any point, but if he had to pick a day to, it'd be exam day. The pros soothe the worry that comes with that thought, though, so he moves along.
The written portion of the exam is separated by middle school, so Midoriya has to sit and wait in his seat surrounded by hopefully soon-to-be former classmates. He gets a couple jabs, but a pair of teachers walk in and start to hand out tests, which stops that.
The exam has three portions: mathematics, writing, and reading. Each is an hour and a half long with thirty minute breaks in between. Midoriya has been studying for this moment for half a year. Most of the info online said that the written U.A exam wasn't notoriously difficult but still wasn't something to brush off.
Midoriya definitely hadn't brushed it off. The first part—mathematics—flies by. It's only barely like the practice test he found online, but the fact that he's allowed a calculator for it eases his worry somewhat.
The second part, which was reading, also goes well. He'd always been a quick reader, mostly out of his need to glean information quickly out of different articles and books. There are odd passages though, and even one in English, but he gets through them alright.
The final portion, writing, is probably the easiest for him. He's tasked to write an essay on a theoretical hero. Said hero has a simple yet useful emitter Quirk and specializes in close-quarters combat. Midoriya, and presumably every other student, has to explain the hero's strengths and weaknesses, make up super moves, give them a name, and explain their best course of action in a variety of scenarios.
Midoriyadoesn'tturn in his paper early even though he can. He isn't stupid. An extra half hour is something that he should spend wisely, so he proofreads four times and tweaks a couple sections. He also adds a little to his breakdown on the hero's Quirk.
The written test is finished after that. Most people make a beeline right for the free snacks outside the testing room, but Midoriya decides to head for the auditorium. He isn't the first one there, but he's the only one in his row, which is nice. He texts his mom that he finished the exam and that the practical is about to start.
Gradually, the massive room fills. Midoriya is surrounded by kids from his middle school, along with others from schools near his. They all talk among themselves but ignore him, which is fine. He can focus on keeping his muttering in check that way.
At exactly three o'clock (Midoriya only knows because he was looking at hero stats on his phone), the lights dim. A hush immediately falls over everyone. A single spotlight shines down on a raised podium where a man now stands.
"Hey, hey, hey!" the man yells, cupping his hands over his mouth even though he has a microphone. "How's everyone doin' tonight!"
There is absolute silence. Midoriya tries not to freak out about the fact thatPresent Micis standingright there, holy shit!
"Oh, I see. Playin' it cool. I feel ya. Anyways," Mic pulls a remote out of his back pocket and hits a button, "you all read those pamphlets, so you should know how this exam works! There's three types of villain bots, each with different point values."
A screen lights up behind him as he speaks, displaying the silhouettes of four robots.
"One pointers are worth—you guessed it—one point each!" The hero continues, "They're kinda fast but really weak. Two pointers are next, they pack more of a punch. And then there's three pointers, which are basically tanks. Any questions!?"
Someone coughs about ten rows down from Midoriya. "Ah, yes, you with the raised hand. Yeah, you who looked behind yourself!" Present Mic chuckles.
A spotlight lights up the area Mic pointed to, showing a now standing girl. "You only named three robots, but there's four on screen! What gives?"
Present Mic looks behind himself and rubs his glasses. "Oh yeah, that. The zero pointer's just an obstacle. It's worth nothing and you should try your best to avoid it. Anyone else?" There was a moment of silence. "Alright! Let's get this show on the road! Can I get a yeah!?" More silence. "Yeesh, tough crowd. Go get changed and try to get a little excited! This is UA!"
A short bus ride to the exam ground later, Midoriya stands before a gigantic gate, pressed between two hundred other kids. Everyone seems to be doing some kind of warm up. Midoriya sees someone with a rather long and fishlike tail stretching it over his shoulder, and a tall girl splaying her fingers over and over again.
The sheer number of people and Quirks nearly overwhelm him. It's like everyone here has a strong and interesting Quirk and is prepared to use it to the fullest potential.
How can he compare? He had two months with this power, and every person here had at least a decade. He'd probably make a total fool of himself and end up with nothing. All Might and Gran would be so disappointed, and he'd have to go to Ketsubetsu, which wasn't bad, but U.A was famous for making top heroes, and if he wanted to be number one he had—
"Stop muttering. It's distracting," an annoyed sounding voice comes from his left.
"S-sorry, it's just a nervous habit." Midoriya turns around. "Uh, good luck, I guess!"
The person behind him is a tall, shirtless boy who has large pink spikes growing out of his torso. The boy sneers, "Turn around unless you want me to flatten you when this thing starts."
"Right, yeah, sorry! My bad!" Midoriya whirls around to face the door and suddenly finds himself counting backwards from one hundred.
"Alllllright, listeners!" the voice of Present Mic screams from up high. Midoriya looks up to see him sitting in some kind of tower. "Are you ready!?!"
For the first time that day, the hero hopefuls respond with a disjointed 'yeah'.
"Perfect! Here's your countdown! Ten, nine, GO!"
Most of the kids there look up at Present Mic with confusion. Many of them laugh at what they think is a poor joke. None of them move, except for one.
Midoriya, who'd been training with the world's top hero and his teacher, who'd had it beaten into him that real fights don't have countdowns, shoots forward in a blur of green lighting. He manages to wall jump all the way up a pair of five story buildings and slam down onto a three pointer before Mic calls out that the test is starting for real.
But Midoriya doesn't hear. By the time the person behind him gets ten feet into the exam ground, he'd already racked up five more points from ricocheting off a series of one point bots.
He only has ten minutes, and common sense leads Midoriya to believe that there aren't enough bots in the zone for even half the people to pass. He has to make every second count.
Leaping off an apartment building, he steals a three pointer from a tall boy, who curses at him. Midoriya responds by jumping away and punching the head off a two pointer. That makes thirteen.
Midoriya's main strategy is to keep high and pick off groups of bots from above. Falling down on them makes his attacks that much stronger, and it's probably safer than running around the streets like a headless chicken.
He's proven right when, not five seconds after climbing another building, Midoriya body slams a two pointer and uses a hunk of its metal as a makeshift throwable to knock out a series of one pointers. That makes eighteen points.
Midoriya keeps going like that for a while, and he's eternally grateful that Gran Torino made him think of a strategy instead of letting him go in blind. Midoriya also uses some of his time to help other students in danger. He pulls two out of the way of falling rubble, and takes out a couple bots that were surrounding another.
But despite his forty-seven (or isn't it forty-nine? He lost count) points, Midoriya finds himself losing focus. The feel of Full Cowl coursing through his veins is so liberating. There's moments where he almost feels like a bird gliding through the bird.
He feels… floaty.
And that's when it hits him again. As Midoriya takes another leap (off a ten story building; his mother would have aheart attack),he wills himself to stall midair. He floats there, with a massive grin on his face.
"My trigger! I get it!" He has tofeela certain way to use Float. For the last month, he'd been trying to meditate, and achieve peace of mind, but that wasn't it. He just needed to feel free.
Midoriya finds himself soaring through the air, yelling in joy, and nearly forgetting about the exam. It's a little rough—he can't quite turn—but he can accelerate decently and even control altitude.
But then, it all changes with a rumble and a scream.
[x]
"Huh. Not a very good crop this year. What a shame."
A single tired-looking, dry, black-coloured eye opens to take in the world for the first time in—the eye swings over to a nearby clock—three hours. With a begrudging sigh, the other eye opens, and the man attached sits up.
"Ah, Aizawa! How nice of you to join us! Please, have a look!" a cheery voice says from behind a tea mug.
The man, Aizawa, unzips his puffy yellow sleeping bag and steps out. He stands, accepting a cup of lukewarm coffee from a colleague. He mutters a thanks and turns to look at the large wall of screens.
"How do they look," he says, sipping his drink. He very nearly spits it out when he realizes that it's not coffee, but in fact herbal tea. He shoots a dirty look at the one who handed him it (of course it was Midnight, no one else on the staff drank anything but black tea or coffee).
"Disappointing!" Principal Nedzu says with all of his usual cheer. "There are a couple interesting subjects, but most are nothing compared to last year."
Aizawa zeroes in on the biggest screen, which shows a plain-looking green-haired boy. He's got a smile that's way too cheerful and is soaring through the air without care. It annoys Aizawa, but the kid's got fifty two points, so there's a little leeway.
"I take it you like the green one," Aizawa says, setting the mug of tea on top of Cementoss' monitor. The cement hero is judging rescue points for zone A this year, which Aizawa's grateful for. It means he can squeeze in more sleep.
"You know I'm not allowed to play favorites!" Nedzu says, getting up from his chair and walking over to the zero pointer button. "But heisthe current top scorer! Fifty-two villain points, and, if I had to guess, twenty rescue points to go with!"
"So he's a shoo-in," Aizawa says, gazing at the other screens. "Any other kids I need to keep an eye on?"
"Check out examinee 8761," Midnight suggests, pointing to the bottom left corner of the screen. "She's not too bad, forty-five villain points. No rescues, though."
Examinee number 8771 is an average height, muscular girl. Her Quirk appears to be some form of emitter that lets her generate spikes of metal from her abdomen. From what Aizawa can see, she mainly uses them to spear robots, which will need to change if she wants to get by in U.A. Sticking to one move in combat is peak irrationality.
"I'll take both of them," Aizawa says, slinking back over to his sleeping bag. "Don't wake me up unless someone's dead."
Midnight gives his bag a soft kick once he's climbed inside. "C'mon, you'll miss the best part. I get to push the button this year!"
"I'm not grading rescue points this time, and I can get the videos showing my students later. There's no reason for me to watch." Aizawa sips on a jelly packet and rolls over.
Midnight mutters something about where to shove his logic but turns away and happily pushes the big red button that's on Nedzu's armrest.
Despite himself, Aizawa cracks an eye open to watch the two top scorers. "Interesting..."
[x]
When Present Mic said that the zero pointers were an obstacle to be avoided, Midoriya didn't think that he meant that they were the size ofskyscrapers.
By the time the gargantuan machine pops into existence, there are only two minutes left in the exam. Midoriya stops floating in order to focus on snagging a couple more points from the leftover bots in the far end of the city.
He isn't the only one with that thought process, though, because the boy from earlier is around, pulling spikes from his body and hurling them at robots. He isn't very good, and Midoriya has to take out a couple robots that were about to shoot him in the back.
But then, the zero pointer shoots up from right under them. It utterly levels a whole block, and Midoriya has to grab the shirtless boy by the ankles and get him to safety with a six percent jump. It hurts his legs a bit, particularly the joints, but it's worth it to save the guy from being crushed by rubble.
"I could've gotten out of there myself, glory hog," the boy spits, brushing his hands on his pants as he glared.
"D-don't mention it!" Midoriya squeaks, cringing at his choice of words. The boy makes a nasty comment about Midoriya's hair before climbing down the fire escape on the side building. Midoriya is left to watch the zero pointer level half the city on the roof.
Eventually, Present Mic calls out that the exam is over and for all participants to make for the gate. Midoriya hops off the building.
The walk back is awkward, at least for Midoriya, who has to walk twenty paces behind a guy who very clearly dislikes him. The spiked boy himself mutters a lot, mostly about how dumb the exam was and how his Quirk was useless, which Midoriya thinks is stupid. Seeing the Quirk in use for a couple seconds sent all types of ideas and strategies through his brain.
Eventually, Midoriya reaches a crowd of other test takers. The small army of students is apparently waiting in line to be healed by Recovery Girl. Midoriya, who has no injuries, walks by. She catches his eye and even gives him a quick once-over before nodding. Midoriya figures that she's happy about the fact that he isn't hurt, unlike the boy before him, who has a rather nasty cut across his temple.
He makes his way out of the mock city after that, half giddy from figuring out Float and half exhausted from using it. Quirks are like muscles, after all, and Midoriya had basically run a hundred meter dash with a brand new calf he didn't know how to use. But that's fine! Gran and All Might will still train him back at the gym, and by the time he's in U.A, he'll be golden.
If he gets into U.A, that is.
Oh, god, did he get in? The letter won't come for a week, and he's already panicking. What if the judges docked points because he fooled around with Float at the end? What if he didn't get enough points? What if hefailed the written portion?
It's all he can think about on the train ride home. And at dinner. And while laying in bed. And in his dreams.
Midoriya doesn't tell his mom about it—itbeing his anxiety, not the exam. She got almost every detail about both tests and was just so happy that he couldn't force his doubts on her.
Gran Torino, on the other hand…
"Kid, you look like someone ran over your dog," he says bluntly as Midoriya walks into the gym after school that next Tuesday.
Midoriya flinches. "I think I bombed the exam."
Gran Torino raises a single gray eyebrow. "Explain."
And Midoriya does. He had to start and stop a couple of times, Gran chiding him on his word vomit, but he gets the picture across eventually. Once he finishes telling his story, the older man laughs loudly.
"It's not funny!" Midoriya cries, fighting back tears. "I might not get in! All my work might've been for nothing!"
Gran Torino shakes his head. "Kid, I taught at UA for a year. Trust me when I say that you absolutely killed it."
"What?" Midoriya knows Gran was All Might's homeroom teacher, god knows his predecessor was full of horrifying stories of those days. But does the man really know how U.A would pick students?
"The heroics exam ain't what you're thinking of it," Gran Torino explains, "they look for potential. Most of the time, yes, that potential shows itself in points. But even if you didn't make a single scratch on a robot, they'd probably let you in for saving that kid from the zero pointer. They want kids with heart and brains, not just flashy Quirks."
"So I got in?" Midoriya asks quietly.
Gran Torino shrugs. "I'm an old man, what do I know?" Then, after a second, "If I had to say, yeah you got in. But don't get your hopes up! That old rat is a weird one. No telling what he'll do. Now hurry up and stretch! Toshinori's coming by later, and I want you to actually carry the big oaf this time! None of that falling over halfway through crap!"
The week goes by like normal. Midoriya gets some jeers about the exam, which he expected. No one at school knows he has a Quirk. But for the most part, the days fly by, and soon, the letter arrives.